Botswana 30-31 Oct 2017

1. LYNN WOOLFREY
OPEN DATA OPEN SCIENCE WORKSHOP, UNIVERSITY OF BOTSWANA,
GABORONE, BOTSWANA, 30-31 OCTOBER, 2017

2. DataFirst is a research unit and online data service at the
University of Cape Town. We share government data with
academics for high-quality policy research
Photo: Jade Gibson, 2014

3. DataFirst’s open data and data sharing role supports South
Africa’s open science agenda
Photo: Jade Gibson, 2014

4. We train African data managers in open data best practice
Photo: Jade Gibson, 2014

6. Open Data Principles

7. Examples of Open Data Principles
1996 Bermuda
Principles
Genome data - at a summit in
Bermuda, leaders of the Human
Genome Project agreed on a
revolutionary set of principles
requiring all DNA sequence data be
publicly accessible 24 hours after
generation
2010 Open Government
Data Principles
Government-held data –
Accessibility (non-discrimination,
non-payment, open standards
Completeness
Primacy
Timeliness
Machine-readability
Permanence

8. Accessibility Completeness Primacy Timeliness Clear Licensing
Use of Open
Standards
Machine-
readability
Permanence
1. Easily
discoverable
and
downloadable
(i.e. online)
2. No Usage
Costs - free
3. Non-
discrimination -
Any person
must be able to
access the data
at any time for
any reason
Data must be as
complete as
possible, and
not data subsets
Data must be
released at a
primary, unit-
record level
Data collected
by the
government
must be release
as soon after
collection as
possible
Data must be
clearly labelled
as in the public
domain
Data must be in
Open formats, i.e.
not dependent on
proprietary
software for their
analysis
Data must be
stored in widely-
used file formats
that can be
computer-
processed
Data must be
available in the
long-term,
online and
versioned

9. Data Quality Principles
Comparability Accessibility Primacy Accuracy Security
Timeliness Interpretability

11. Standards for
stages in the
data curation life
cycle

12. Metadata
Management
Tools
We use Nesstar
Publisher, which is free
data markup software
for the creation of xml
compliant metadata
using the Data
Documentation
Initiative (DDI) standard

13. Certification of Data Repositories
The data must be accessible
The data must be in a usable
format
The data must be reliable
The data must be identified in
a unique and persistent way
WDS-Data Seal of
Approval Certification

14. Discovery and Access Tools: NADA Platform

15. We received the Data Seal of Approval in 2014

16. QUESTIONS?
lynn.woolfrey@uct.ac.za
www.datafirst.uct.ac.za